Three Pillars of a Solid Sales Force Enablement Foundation

“You can’t build a great building on a weak foundation.
You must have a solid foundation if you’re going to have a strong superstructure.”
–Gordon B. Hinckley

That’s exactly the same for a successful sales force enablement function, program, or initiative. The better your sales force enablement foundation, the more successful your results will be. The data from our CSO Insights 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study shows the impact of an enablement foundation on sales performance. Today, we discuss the three pillars of a solid enablement foundation. These are enablers for enablement success.

Proven now for two years in a row: Focusing on the customer’s journey and aligning all internal processes accordingly is not merely a nice-to-have add-on. Instead, the degree of alignment between an organization’s internal processes and the customer’s journey is highly relevant for enablement success.

There is still a group of 9.4% that doesn’t consider the customer’s journey at all. Another 35.2% reported an informal alignment. This adds up to 44.6% who have not purposefully aligned their sales process to the customer’s journey. Then, 55.4% reported having either a formal (27.7%) or dynamic (27.7%) alignment.

An informal alignment means that the issue has been discussed and considered but not formally implemented. But this does not necessarily mean that sales processes have been adjusted or that there is a formal alignment or even implementation. A dynamic alignment goes even further: either deriving the sales process from the customer’s journey or dynamically aligning it to the customer’s journey and implementing modifications as soon as changes in the marketplace are detected.

Our study found an average win rate for forecast deals of 46.2%. With no alignment at all, the win rate went down to 40.5%, which is 14% worse than the average. But with a formal or dynamic alignment, the win rate improved significantly—up to 53%, which is a difference of 6.8 percentage points or an improvement by 15%.

Our study found an average quota attainment of 55.8%. Having no alignment led to a quota attainment of 54.2%, which is slightly below average. Interestingly, the informal and the formal alignment also led to 54.4%, which is also below average and is pretty much the same result as having no alignment. But a dynamic alignment led to 63.4%, which is an improvement by 13.6%.

#2: Create an enablement charter to improve revenue attainment

Looking at the data on how organizations approach enablement, it’s interesting to see that 49.1% of all global study participants still treat enablement in a one-off project manner (9.6%) or on an informal basis only (39.5%). Then, 35.7% reported having a formal enablement vision in place, and 15.3% have actually created a formal enablement charter that covers, for instance, vision, mission, purpose, target groups, enablement services, programs, roadmaps and how to measure success.

Our CSO Insights 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study shows that formality matters. If enablement is approached in a one-off project manner, sales performance suffers. Revenue attainment ended up at 84.2% (compared to the study’s average revenue attainment of 90.1%), and that’s a difference of 5.9 percentage points or an actual decline of 6.5%. Win rates ended up at 45.0%, which is below the average win rate of 46.2%.

Instead, if enablement was treated with a formal enablement charter, sales performance results were much better than average. Revenue attainment climbed up to 98.8% (compared to the average of 90.1%), which is a difference of 8.7 percentage points and an actual improvement of 9.6%. Win rates showed a positive impact as well. With a formal enablement charter, win rates climbed to 53.6% (compared to the study’s average win rate of 46.2%). That’s a difference of 7.4 percentage points or an actual improvement of 16%.

Improving the revenue plan attainment by almost 9.6% and the win rate by 16% show a performance impact that ambitious sales leaders cannot ignore.

Cross-functional collaboration does not exist for its own sake. The purpose of collaboration is achieving better results, ideally in a shorter amount of time. Sales force enablement is always a cross-functional discipline because no enablement team can provide integrated content, training, and coaching services throughout the entire customer’s journey for different user groups and powered by technology, alone. That’s why cross-functional collaboration is mandatory for three reasons. First, to provide the defined enablement services. Second, to achieve the enablement goals regarding sales results and productivity. And third, to keep enablement as cost-efficient as possible.

Informal and ad hoc collaboration (the least desirable forms) are still the leading approach (a combined 68.8%), but this is better than last year (83%). While there is overall good news, let’s be aware that 43% of all study participants, like last year, collaborate on an informal basis, and almost 10% don’t collaborate at all.

With increasing enablement maturity, enablement leaders have to define which functions they need to collaborate with, and why. This step is often overlooked, but it is essential. If we can achieve our goals on our own, we won’t collaborate in the first place. We collaborate because we need others to help us provide our services and achieve our goals. How other functions can help has to be specifically defined for each enablement area and with each involved function.

The data in our CSO Insights 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study shows that cross-functional collaboration has an important impact on enablement success. With ad hoc collaboration, only 36% could achieve all or most of their enablement goals. With formal collaboration approaches, 59% could achieve all or most of their enablement goals.So, an effective cross-functional collaboration process is an important pillar for enablement success.